SUE QUINN is a food writer, journalist, and author of several cookbooks covering subjects as diverse as Japanese, Spanish, and vegan cooking, and cooking with children. Based on the south coast of England, she writes regularly about food and cooking for national newspapers and magazines including the Guardian, the Telegraph, and Delicious magazine.

Super food is a term often exploited by food manufacturers to make products seem more nutritious than they actually are. Sometimes these products lack the scientific evidence to support their alleged health benefits and are no more than fads. This is a shame. Marketing hype aside, there is hard scientific research to show that some foods contain exceptional levels of nutrients that promote good health and protect the human body against disease. These are the super foods I have focused on in this book. Finding a standard measure of what constitutes a super food is, however, complicated. A number of rating systems have been developed around the world that rank foods according to their nutrient density—the measure of nutrients per calorie. The problem is that these systems are not consistent. For example, some use different sets of essential nutrients as the basis for the rating. What’s more, nutrient density is not the only important factor. For example, there are thousands of phytochemicals that appear to have the potential to protect against a range of diseases, but these are not included in nutrient density measures because they have not been established as essential for bodily function. After researching various rating systems, I have devised my own list of powerhouse foods (see pages 10 to 16) that contain exceptionally high levels of vitamins, phytochemicals, and other nutrients that are strongly associated with good health and reduced risk of chronic disease. The super foods that appear on this list are set in boldface in each recipe’s ingredients list so that they can be identified easily. Some ingredients found in the recipes—such as nut milks, wakame, tahini, and miso—are also set in boldface because they are forms of super foods. The list is by no means exhaustive, but provides a cross-section of super foods in different food groups to help you load your diet with as much goodness as possible.